


A time to plant, A time to reap

by LadyoftheNight



Series: to everything, there is a season [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bonding, Canon Compliant, M/M, Pre-Slash, while they're on the shuttle bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 07:11:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17955953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyoftheNight/pseuds/LadyoftheNight
Summary: On the shuttle to Starfleet Academy, Jim realizes his hangover





	A time to plant, A time to reap

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Turn! Turn! Turn!

It’s halfway through the shuttle ride that his hangover hit him.  Jim Kirk hadn’t had anything without less than a touch of alcohol to it in about fourteen hours.  As a regular drinker (not an alcoholic,  _ not yet _ ), he mumbled a curse to himself about forgetting water and shoved his face in his hands.

“Here,” McCoy, Leonard McCoy, said, shoving his flask at Kirk.

“What?”  He grumbled.

“Hair of the dog.  Until we get there,” The supposed doctor grumbled.

Rather than look a gift horse in the mouth, Kirk nabbed the flask and threw down a couple of swallows.  Immediately, the pervasive headache subsided to just a dull pain behind his eyes. 

“Thanks.  I owe you one.”

“Won’t let anybody feel pain, if I can stop it.”

 

Kirk took a moment then to really regard this man next to him.  He was maybe a just a couple years older than Kirk himself, but worry lines had already etched their way across his face.  The half beard/half stubble implied a lack of self attention. Civvies even, not cadet reds. Crumpled civvies, at that. 

In short, they were two of a kind.

Kirk liked him immediately.

 

“So, Starfleet,” Jim said, casually, ignoring all the slight glares from cadets around them.

“What about it?”  It seemed as if everything out of McCoy’s mouth was a grumble of some sort.

“Why don’t you have anywhere else to go?  There are a lot of planets in the Federation.  And outside it.”

“Gotta get there somehow, don’t I?”

“If you wanted to just get away, you wouldn’t join an organization with strict rules and requirements.  And you said  _ ex _ -wife.  So, you want some structure to your new life, far away from her, and Starfleet was the first thing you saw that fit the bill.  It was an impulse decision.”

“What’re you, some kind of fucking genius?”

At that, Kirk fell silent.  Like he needed a reminder of that.  Sometimes hearing genius wasn’t a compliment.  More often than not, really, it was an insult. A reproachful look from a mother.  A lack of living up to a father. Something only alcohol could give a moment’s relief to.

 

They were touching down at Starfleet Academy when the silence between the two rough cadets-to-be broke.

“You’re right, kid.”  McCoy’s voice had softened.  “Looks like an impulse decision for you too.  Birds of a feather should stick together.”

A solid, but incredibly soft hand clapped against Kirk’s shoulder, and he had to wonder what the next three years would be like if he’d already found one person (two people, counting Pike) willing to put up with him.

**Author's Note:**

> if I have it in me there will be more along the lines of titles from this song with these two getting together and finally kissing, dammit


End file.
